The neurobiology of giving versus receiving support The role .docx

The neurobiology of giving versus receiving support: The role
of
stress-related and social reward-related neural activity
Tristen K. Inagaki, Ph.D.1,*, Kate E. Byrne Haltom2, Shosuke
Suzuki2, Ivana Jevtic2, Erica
Hornstein, M.A.2, Julienne E. Bower, Ph.D.2, and Naomi I.
Eisenberger, Ph.D.2,*
1Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh,
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
2Department of Psychology, University of California, Los
Angeles, CA 90095-1563
Abstract
Objectives—There is a strong association between supportive
ties and health. However most
research has focused on the health benefits that come from the
support one receives while largely
ignoring the support giver and how giving may contribute to
good health. Moreover, few studies
have examined the neural mechanisms associated with support
giving or how giving support
compares to receiving support.
Method—The current study assessed the relationships: 1)
between self-reported receiving and

giving social support and vulnerability for negative
psychological outcomes and 2) between
receiving and giving social support and neural activity to
socially rewarding and stressful tasks.
Thirty-six participants (M age=22.36, SD=3.78, 44% female)
completed three tasks in the fMRI
scanner: (1) a stress task (mental arithmetic under evaluative
threat), (2) an affiliative task (viewing
images of close others), and (3) a prosocial task.
Results—Both self-reported receiving and giving social support
were associated with reduced
vulnerability for negative psychological outcomes. However,
across the three neuroimaging tasks,
giving, but not receiving support was related to reduced stress-
related activity (dorsal anterior
cingulate cortex, (r=−.27), left (r=−.28) and right anterior insula
(r=−.33), and left (r=−.32) and
right amygdala (r=−.32) to a stress task, greater reward-related
activity (left (r=.42) and right
ventral striatum (VS; r=.41) to an affiliative task, and greater
caregiving-related activity (left VS
(r=.31), right VS (r=.31), and septal area (r=.39) to a prosocial
task.
Conclusion—These results contribute to an emerging literature
suggesting that support giving is
an overlooked contributor to how social support can benefit
health.
Keywords

social support; helping; caregiving; providing social support;
social relationships and health
Correspondence should be addressed to T.K.I. and N.I.E.:
Tristen Inagaki, University of Pittsburgh, Department of
Psychology, 210
South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, [email protected],
Phone: 412-624-4211, Fax: 412-648-7277; Naomi Eisenberger,
UCLA-Psych Soc, Box 951563, 4444 Franz Hall, Los Angeles,
CA 90095-1563, [email protected], Phone: 310-267-5196, Fax:
310-206-5895.
Conflicts of Interest and Source of Funding: None declared
HHS Public Access
Author manuscript
Psychosom Med. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017
May 01.
Published in final edited form as:
Psychosom Med. 2016 May ; 78(4): 443–453.
doi:10.1097/PSY.0000000000000302.
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Social relationships are critical to health and well-being (1–3).
Those without close ties fare
poorly across a range of important outcomes (1,4,5) including
mental and physical health
(2–6), whereas those with more social ties show enhanced
mental and physical health. To
date, the research literature has focused on how “social
support”—the perception or
experience that one is loved and cared for by others, esteemed
and valued, and part of a
social network of mutual assistance and obligations (7)—relates
to positive health outcomes.
Since social support, by definition, focuses more on the
consequences of receiving support,
studies linking social support and health have largely focused
on the support recipient while
ignoring the individual giving support and care. Therefore the
following study aimed to

examine the associations between both receiving and giving
support with: 1) vulnerability to
negative psychological outcomes and 2) neural activity to
stressful and socially rewarding
tasks.
Since the 1970’s, studies have shown associations between
supportive ties and reduced
morbidity and mortality (8). Theories on social support suggest
that these health benefits
may come from the support we receive from others, which then
helps to reduce stress
responding (9–11). For example, undergoing stressful tasks with
a friend present (vs. alone)
leads to reduced cardiovascular responses to the stressors (12,
see 13 for a review). In
addition, self-reports of social support have been associated
with reduced distress-related
neural activity (in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC))
to an experience of social
rejection (14,15) and receiving support during a painful
experience is associated with
reduced pain-related neural activity (16,17). Though the
benefits of receiving support are
well established, receiving support can sometimes be

ineffective, or in worst cases, backfire
(e.g. 18,19). Therefore, it is possible that the support that one
receives may not explain the
relationship between social support and health in its entirety.
There has been increasing interest in the support giver, and the
health benefits that may be
accrued by giving to others. Thus, support giving, much like
support receiving, is associated
with a number of beneficial mental and physical health
outcomes (20–24). Specifically,
giving to others is associated with lower mortality rates over a
5-year period (20), fewer sick
days (24), and reduced cardiovascular activity over a 24-hour
period (22). The mechanisms
leading to support giving’s beneficial effects may have evolved
out of a caregiving system
that helped nurture and support infants and others in need (25–
30). In particular, giving to
others may rely on distinct neural regions that serve to reinforce
the caregiving behavior and
are also involved in the regulation of stress responses (31,32).
In fact, it has been shown that the neural regions involved in
maternal caregiving behavior in

animals and the provision of social support in humans are also
known for processing basic
rewards; these include the ventral striatum (VS) and septal area
(SA; 31,32). Moreover,
these caregiving regions have inhibitory connections with
regions known to be involved in
threat and stress responding such as the amygdala (33,34). This
activity in caregiving
regions may dampen stress responding in order to facilitate
adaptive care during times of
stress, which over time may have health benefits. For example,
giving support to a romantic
partner in need (vs. not giving support) activated both the VS
and SA (32). Furthermore, one
of these regions, the SA, was negatively correlated with
amygdala activity when participants
gave support to their partners, suggesting that caregiving-
related circuitry may help dampen
Inagaki et al. Page 2
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stress responding. Indeed, in a separate study, giving support to
a friend (vs. a control
condition) led to reduced sympathetic-related responding to a
laboratory-based stress task
(21). Together, these findings suggest that giving to others may
be stress-reducing on its own
and therefore may be an overlooked contributor to the mental
and physical health benefits of
social support.
Still, little work has examined both receiving and giving
support in terms of how they relate
to stress-related neural activity. Furthermore, no studies have

assessed social support and
neural activity to positive, stress-free experiences. Hence, the
current study examined the
associations between both receiving support and giving support
with neural activity in
response to stressful and socially rewarding tasks. Specifically,
we examined how both
individual differences in receiving and giving support related to
neural activity in response to
a stress task, an affiliative task (in which participants viewed
images of their close others),
and a prosocial task.
There were two main goals. First, we examined whether self-
reported support receiving
related to negative psychological outcomes and neural activity
to the three tasks. The current
literature on receiving social support and health-related
outcomes suggest that receiving
social support is sometimes helpful, particularly at reducing
stress, and sometimes not.
Therefore, receiving support was hypothesized to be associated
with less negative
psychological outcomes, however, given the mixed findings in
the literature, no directional

hypotheses were made for the neural outcomes. Second, we
examined the associations
between self-reported support giving and negative psychological
outcomes and neural
activity to the three tasks. Based on emerging findings that
giving to others might be good
for health and relationships, support giving was hypothesized to
be associated with less
negative psychological outcomes, decreased stress-related
activity to the stressful task,
increased reward-related activity to viewing close others, and
increased caregiving-related
activity to the prosocial task.
Method
Participants
Forty-seven individuals participated as part of a larger study on
the neural mechanisms
associated with social support. The sample was then constrained
to those who completed all
3 neuroimaging tasks. A single outlier who was consistently
greater than 3 SD’s away from
the mean (both below and above) across multiple tasks was
removed leaving a final sample
of 36 participants (Table 1). The self-reported ethnic

composition included 8.3% Black/
African American, 22.2% Latino/Chicano, 33.3% White, 30.6%
Asian, and 5.6% Other.
Procedures were run between June and October of 2014 in
accordance with Institutional
Review Board guidelines and all participants provided informed
consent.
Self-report Measures
Support Receiving and Giving
Support receiving and giving was assessed with the 21-item 2-
way social support scale (35).
Questions are rated on a 0-not at all to 5-always scale with
higher numbers indicating a
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greater amount of support received and given. Sample items to
assess receiving support
include: “when I am feeling down there is someone I can lean
on,” and “I have someone to
help me if I am physically unwell.” Giving support is evaluated
by items such as: “I look for
ways to cheer people up when they are feeling down,” and “I
have helped someone with
their responsibilities when they were unable to fulfill them.”
Participants reported receiving
more support than they gave (t(35)=8.26, p<.001). Reports of
receiving support were also
moderately associated with reports of support giving (r=.501,
p=.002) suggesting that both
forms of social support are related, but separate constructs.
Vulnerability Index
Since receiving social support has historically been associated

with less stress, we examined
the associations between self-reported receiving and giving
social support and a broad array
of negative psychological outcomes. A “vulnerability index”
was created that included
depression (Beck Depression Inventory,36), sensitivity to social
rejection (Mehrabian
Rejection Sensitivity,37), perceptions of stress (Perceived
Stress Scale,38), and feelings of
loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale,39). The scales were
standardized to the same scale by
converting the raw scores to z-scores. Scores were averaged to
create a single value per
participant (α=.82).
Neuroimaging Measures
The association between questionnaire measures of receiving
and giving social support and
neural activity was assessed across 3 separate tasks
Stress Task
Stress-related neural activity was manipulated with a modified
version of the Montreal
Imaging Stress Task (MIST;40) where participants calculated
math problems of varying

difficulty under the guise that the experimenters were
comparing their performance to other
students at UCLA. As a control condition, participants
completed “practice” blocks where
they answered easy math problems (e.g. 1+2+4=) silently in
their heads. Participants pushed
a button once they came up with an answer. No answer choices
or responses were displayed.
During the “test” blocks, the blocks designed to elicit stress,
participants mentally calculated
more difficult math problems (e.g. 14 × 3/6 =) under time
pressure and then selected an
answer from among a set of possible answers. The subsequent
screen provided the
participant with feedback about whether or not they answered
correctly and their
performance relative to the “typical UCLA student.” Over time,
the feedback indicated that
participants’ performance (based on how quickly and accurately
they responded relative to
the average student) became increasingly worse as the typical
student’s performance grew
better, thus amplifying the social evaluative nature and
uncontrollability of the situation.

Participants completed a total of 8 56-second blocks separated
by 5-seconds of fixation
crosshair: 4 practice blocks and 4 test blocks. Within each
block, 8 math problems were
presented for 5-seconds each. For the practice blocks, math
problems were followed by 2-
seconds of rest, but for the test blocks, math problems were
followed by 2-seconds of
feedback (1-second indicating whether the participant correctly
answered and 1-second
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indicating how they performed relative to others). After each
block participants rated how
stressful they found the previous block (“how stressful was
that”), rated from 1-not at all
stressed to 4-extremely stressed. As expected, participants
found the test blocks more
stressful (M=2.90, SD=.73) than the practice blocks (M=1.98,
SD=.72, t(35)=8.74, p<.001)
indicating that the test blocks were indeed stressful. Stress-
related neural activity was
evaluated by comparing the test blocks to the practice blocks.
Affiliative Task
To examine associations between social support and reward-
related activity in the ventral
striatum to viewing images of close others, participants
completed a modified affiliative task
previously shown to activate reward-related neural circuitry
(41–43). Prior to their
experimental session, participants emailed 2 digital photographs
of 2 different close others

and ratings to two items using a 1–10 scale: “how close are you
to this person,” anchored by
“not at all” and “extremely” and “to what extent is this person a
source of social support to
you” anchored by “not a source of support” and “tremendous
source of support.”
Participants were indeed able to identify people with whom they
had close, supportive
relationships (M closeness=9.21, SD=1.31; M
supportiveness=9.03, SD=1.26). One outlier,
who rated one of their close others a 4 on closeness and
supportiveness, was removed from
any analyses evaluating the affiliative task. Therefore, the
affiliative task is based on a
sample of 35 participants.
Images of close others were reformatted into standard space and
presented along with
gender, race, and age-matched strangers in a block design. For
each block, 2 images of a
single person (either a close other or a stranger) were presented
for a total of 16 seconds (8
seconds for each of the 2 images). In between blocks of images,
participants completed easy
mental arithmetic silently in their heads (e.g. count back by 3’s

from 639) in 12-second
blocks. This was included as a neutral baseline condition
intended to prevent participants
from continuing to think about their close others in between
trials. In total, 16 blocks were
presented, 8 mental arithmetic, 4 close other, and 4 stranger.
Neural activity to the affiliative
task was evaluated by comparing blocks of close others to
blocks of strangers.
Prosocial Task
In addition to exploring associations between social support and
neural activity to a stressful
and affiliative task, we wanted to understand the associations
between social support and
neural responses to acting prosocially. Thus, participants
completed a modified version of a
donation task (44,45). In this task, participants had the chance
to earn raffle tickets for
themselves and for “someone you know that could use some
money right now.” Before the
task began, participants were asked to name the person they
would be playing for and to
provide the email and phone number of this person so that the
experimenters could later

contact them directly if they won. After the study was over, the
tickets were entered into a
drawing (including subjects as well as those they were playing
for), in which 2 people won
$300 each. The more tickets a participant won, the greater
chance that they or the person
they were playing for could win the $300.
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During the task, participants saw 4 different trial types. On each
trial, participants viewed a
proposed distribution of raffle tickets split across themselves
and the other person they chose
to play for (3.5 seconds followed by a jittered fixation period,
lasting 3 seconds on average
(range=2.28–6.07)), and participants could then choose whether
to accept or reject the
proposed split. During the key prosocial trials—costly giving
trials, participants chose
whether to accept offers where they could give raffle tickets to
the other person at a cost of
tickets for themselves (e.g. YOU −10, OTHER +50). During the
self-reward trials,
participants could win raffle tickets for themselves without any
cost to the other person (e.g.
YOU +40, OTHER +0). On control trials, participants saw trials
in which no tickets could be
won or lost (YOU +0, OTHER +0). Costly reward (e.g. YOU
+30, OTHER −10) trials were
also included in the task to keep participants engaged and
interested in the task, but were not
analyzed.
The prosocial task included 90 trials (40 costly giving—to
account for the fact that some

trials would not be accepted, 20 pure reward, 20 control, 10
costly reward). The range of
tickets that participants could win or lose varied between −30
tickets and +70 tickets. The
running total of tickets was not shown. During data analysis,
trials were binned based on the
acceptance of an offer. Thus, if a participant accepted a costly
giving trial, that trial was
modeled as a prosocial giving trial, otherwise it was modeled
separately and not examined
(based on prior procedures; 44,45). To assess caregiving-related
neural activity in response
to acting prosocially, costly giving trials were compared to both
control and self-reward
trials.
fMRI Data Acquisition
Participants were scanned at UCLA’s Staglin IMHRO Center for
Cognitive Neuroscience on
a Siemens 3 Telsa “Tim Trio” MRI scanner. Two anatomical
scans, a high-resolution T1-
weighted echo-planar imaging volume (spin-echo, TR=5000ms;
TE=33ms; matrix size
128×128; 36 axial slices; FOV =20cm; 3mm thick, skip 1mm)

and T2-weighted matched-
bandwidth (slice thickness=3mm, gap=1mm, 36 slices,
TR=5000ms, TE=34ms, flip
angle=90°, matrix=128×128, FOV=20 cm) were collected.
Functional scans for each of the
three tasks (stress task: 9 minutes, 31 seconds; affiliative task:
4 minutes, 14 seconds;
prosocial task: 10 minutes, 12 seconds) were then acquired
(echo planar T2* weighted
gradient-echo, TR=2000ms, TE=25ms, flip angle=90°, matrix
size 64×64, 36 axial slices,
FOV=20 cm; 3-mm thick, skip 1mm). The affiliative and
prosocial tasks were
counterbalanced across participants, but the stress task was
always presented after these
other two tasks to ensure that the stressfulness of completing
the stress task did not alter the
potentially pleasant experience of completing the other two
tasks.
Statistical Analyses
Self-report correlations
Self-report measures of receiving and giving social support
were correlated with the

vulnerability index, the measure of current negative
psychological outcomes, using SPSS
version 20.0.
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fMRI Data
Data was preprocessed using the DARTEL procedure in SPM8
(Wellcome Department of

Imaging Neuroscience, London). Images were realigned, then
normalized to the T2-
weighted matched bandwidth and warped into Montreal
Neurologic Institute (MNI) space,
and finally smoothed with an 8mm Gaussian kernel, full width
at half maximum. The
general linear model was used to estimate first-level effects to
each condition of interest
compared to their respective controls. Group level analyses
were then computed using the
first-level contrast images for each participant.
Region-of-Interest (ROI) Analyses
Given that the main goals of the current study were to examine
the association between self-
reported social support and stress, reward, and caregiving-
related neural circuitry to three
separate tasks, analyses were constrained to a-priori
hypothesized regions-of-interest (ROI,
see Fig. 1). In addition, two regions that were unrelated to the
hypotheses tested in the
current study were created in order to test the specificity of the
associations.
For the stress task, we examined regions known to signal threat

and stress including the
dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), left and right anterior
insula (AI), and left and right
amygdala. Stress-related ROIs were structurally defined using
the Automated Anatomical
Labeling (AAL) Atlas (46). To further refine the dACC ROI, we
constrained the region at
32<y<0 on the basis of summary data on cingulate activations to
physical pain (47) and for
the AI ROI, we divided the insula at y=8 the approximate
boundary between the dysgranular
and granular sectors.
For the affiliative task, left and right ventral striatum (VS)
ROI’s were structurally defined
by combining the caudate and putamen from the AAL Atlas and
then constraining the
regions at −24<x<24, 4<y<18, −12<z<0. Based on previous
work on the neural correlates of
support giving (32), the anatomical ROIs of the VS and an
additional ROI of the septal area
(SA) were used to explore activity in maternal caregiving
regions to the prosocial task. The
SA ROI was previously defined for a study examining prosocial
emotions (48) according to

microscopic sections between y=0 and y=14 that show the
location of the septal nuclei
through the anterior commissure and anterior to the optic
chiasma. Though the septal nuclei
are too small to be imaged with the 3T fMRI, the SA ROI used
in the current study
encompasses the larger surrounding area. The SA has also been
imaged and reported on
previously (49–51) although it is still a relatively small region
and thus results should be
interpreted with caution.
Finally, “control” regions were created based on their
irrelevance to the current tasks in
order to establish whether the associations between social
support and neural activity were
specific to the hypothesized regions. The supplementary motor
area (SMA) was chosen as a
control region for the affiliative task because this task did not
involve any motor actions (i.e.
there were no button responses required) and the olfactory
cortex, including the olfactory
tubercle and Broca’s olfactory cortex located under the corpus
callosum, was chosen as a

control region for the stress and prosocial tasks because there is
no hypothesized function of
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this region in stress or prosocial processes. Both regions were
defined using the AAL atlas
using the Wake Forest University Pickatlas (52).
All ROI analyses were run in Marsbar

(http://marbar.sourceforge.net) and thresholded at p<.
05.
Results
Correlation between receiving/giving social support and the
vulnerability index
In line with the current literature linking social support with
well-being, both self-reported
receiving support (r=−.60, p<.001) and self-reported giving
support (r=−.64, p<.001) were
negatively correlated with the vulnerability index (Fig. 2). That
is, both receiving and giving
more support were related to lower reported negative
psychological outcomes.
Neural Results
Stress Task
Main effect of task: For the stressful math task, we looked for
activity in stress and threat-
related regions (dACC, AI, amygdala) when participants
completed test blocks compared to
when participants completed practice blocks. Validating the
stressfulness of the task, dACC
(M=.21, SD=.61) and left (M=.14, SD=.51) and right AI
(M=.08, SD=.55) activity was
greater during the test blocks compared to the practice blocks
(M dACC=.06, SD=.48,
t(35)=2.07, p=.023; M L AI=.03, SD=.42, t(35)=1.63, p=.056;

M R AI=−.07, SD=.43,
t(35)=2.29, p=.014). Amygdala activity, however, did not differ
between test (L amyg M=−.
25, SD=.59; R amyg M=−.30, SD=.63) and practice blocks (L
amyg M=−.30, SD=.63,
t(35)=.74, p=.23; R amyg M=−.32, SD=.48, t(35)=.16, p=.44).
Correlations between receiving/giving support and neural
activity: We then examined
whether questionnaire measures of social support were related
to neural activity to the stress
task. Although receiving support was not associated with dACC
(r=.07), AI (left r=.08, right
r=.03) or amygdala activity (left r=−.04, right r=−.02), support
giving was negatively
correlated with dACC (r=−.27, p=.054), left (r=−.28, p=.048)
and right AI (r=−.33, p=.024),
and left (r=−.32, p=.028) and right amygdala (r=−.32, p=.028
activity to test (vs. practice)
blocks (Fig. 3). The correlations between neural activity and
self-reported support giving
were significantly different from the correlations with self-
reported support receiving across
all of these regions (dACC Z=2.01, p=.022; left AI Z=2.13,
p=.016; right AI Z=2.02, p=.
014; left amygdala Z=1.71, p=.043; right amygdala Z=1.81,
p=.035). Thus, those who
reported the most support giving also displayed the least amount
of threat-related activity to
the socially evaluative stressor, which is consistent with
hypotheses that support giving

might be stress-reducing.
Supporting the specificity of this effect, there were no
associations between olfactory cortex
activity (the chosen control region) and either self-reported
receiving support (r=.164, p=.
170) or self-reported support giving (r=.007, p=.491) in
response to the stress task (test vs.
practice blocks).
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http://marbar.sourceforge.net
Affiliative Task
Main effect of task: Ventral striatum activity was assessed as
participants viewed images of
close, supportive others and strangers. Consistent with the
importance of reward-related
processing to close social relationships (42), viewing images of
close others (vs. strangers)
led to increased activity in the left (M close other=.04, SD=.22,
M stranger=−.03, SD=.20,
t(34)=1.88, p=.034) and right VS (M close other=−.03, SD=.20,
M stranger=−.10, SD=.21,
t(34)=1.71, p=.049).
Correlations between receiving/giving support and neural
activity: Correlational
analyses revealed that while support receiving was not
associated with VS activity (r left=.
03, r right=−.02), support giving was associated with greater
left (r=.42, p=.006) and right
VS (r=.41, p=.008) to viewing images of close others (vs.
strangers). Moreover, these
associations were significantly different from those between
receiving support and VS
activity (left Z=2.34, p=.009; right Z=2.58, p=.005; Fig. 4).
To examine the specificity of these effects, we examined the
correlation between activity in
the control region (SMA) and questionnaire measures of social

support. As expected, there
were no associations between SMA activity and either self-
reported receiving support (r=−.
024, p=.446) or self-reported support giving (r=.191, p=.136) in
response to the affiliative
task.
Prosocial Task
Main effect of task: To ensure that the prosocial task …
Running Head: NEUROBIOLOGY
NEUROBIOLOGY 6
Neurobiology

Shanae Hampton
Dr. Alzen
Cal Baptist University
BEH 250
June 1, 2020
Introduction
Good job including an introduction that gives some contextual
information about the article. Try to be a little clearer in your
language though. This is hard to follow if you haven't read the
article.
This article seeks to address the role of stress-related and
social reward-related neural activity where the main focus is to
examine the relation between giving and receiving. The impact
of supportive ties of an individual and their health status
looking at how one receives a health benefit that one receives as
they ignore the support giver as well as how giving may
contribute to the general good health. Various approaches shall
be utilized to fetch information from the individual experiences
as well as from the doctoral perspective. It is worth noting that
the neural regions involved in maternal caregiving behavior in
animals as well as the provision of social support in humans are
also known to process the basic reward including ventral
striatum and the septal area. Thus the analysis will base on the
suggestions that support giving as an overlooked contributor to
how social support can benefit health.
Article Evaluation
The main components evaluated in this article will the
examination of whether self-related support receiving related to

negative psychological outcomes and neural activity to three
tasks. I will also examine the associations between self-reported
support giving and negative psychological outcomes and neural
activity to the three tasks. The analysis will be based on the
findings that have risen that giving to others might be good for
health and relationships, analysis of how support giving can be
associated with less negative psychological outcomes, a
decrease in the stress-related activities, an increase in the
reward-related activities and the general pro-social task.
Measurement
The main measurement strategy that these authors utilized
in the research was the behavioral surveys where analysis is
done on how individuals take on the value of the reward and
how they respond back to the person who rewarded. With this
analysis the behavioral model helps them to come up with the
response variables as and the effort brought to the social
domains of an individual: (Inagaki.et.al.2016). Since the results
being examined as psychological where the essence of good
health is being searched this measurement strategy works to
unleash all indicators of both positive and negative
psychological outcomes that result to stress-related activities
and the need for an individual to increase rewards to earn a
social stability. The challenge to this strategy is that these
surveys are subject to response biases which affect the quality
of results. Could use more explanation of response bias.
The variables in this case could have been measured using
the milestone approach since they track the development of the
results out of a certain action hence they will help to read and
understand the caregiving behaviors in both animals and human
beings and hence enable better results. The limitation is that it
may work based on assumptions where the milestones are
subjected to doctoral experiences that may not be good to obtain
the rational psychological change. What about the fMRI tasks?
How was that used to collect data?

Sampling
The sample for analysis contained 47 individuals that
formed the study on the neural mechanisms associated with
social support. The self-reported ethnic composition included
8.3% Black/ African American, 22.2% Latino/Chicano, 33.3%
White, 30.6% Asian, and 5.6% Other languages which helped to
provide the required information.
Basing on the samples provided, the authors aimed to
generalize the social support scale as a result of the self-
reported ethnic composition. The composition is very important
when it comes to analysis of the relationship between the health
of an individual and the factors that contribute to the condition
including the negative psychological outcomes, the stressful
task and the health related activities. This limits the
effectiveness of the results obtained in terms of fulfilling the set
hypotheses since through generalization the analysis may not
understand the individual social and psychological
characteristics. Who are they trying to generalize to?
Analysis
One of the assumptions made by the author is the historical
reliability that social support is associated with less stress
which in terms affects the negative psychological outcomes.
Such assumptions led to the increase of the vulnerability
increase among some samples. A “vulnerability index” was
created that included depression like Beck Depression
Inventory,36), sensitivity to social rejection including
Mehrabian Rejection Sensitivity(37), perceptions of stress
(Perceived Stress Scale,38), and feelings of loneliness (UCLA
Loneliness Scale,39). I'm having a difficult time understanding
what you are trying to argue here. I also don't see a plausible
example of how the direction of causality may be inverted.
These figures provides the direction of the causality based
on the vulnerability index and thus Over time, the feedback
indicated that participants’ performance based on how quickly
and accurately they responded relative to the average student
became increasingly worse as the typical student’s performance

grew better, thus amplifying the social evaluative nature and
uncontrollability of the situation.
Ethics
As a way of protecting the rights and safety of the
participants involved in the investigations, For example, giving
support to a romantic partner in need against those not giving
support was activated both the VS and SA (32). Furthermore,
one of these regions, the SA, was negatively correlated with
amygdala activity when participants gave support to their
partners, suggesting that caregiving-related circuitry may help
dampen response to stress. These were some acts of ethics in
the operation that could not only protect them but also motivate
their intrinsic moves. I'm struggling to understand what you're
saying. I was expecting you to talk about risk to participants in
the study and what the researchers did to protect that.
Some of the potential issues mentioned in the study
included exploration of the affinitive task where images of close
others were reformatted into standard space and presented along
with gender, race, and age-matched strangers in a block design.
In addition to exploring associations between social support and
neural activity to a stressful and affiliative task, we wanted to
understand the associations between social support and neural
responses to acting pro-socially.
Conclusion
This article brings out clearly that the relationship between
support giving and reduced stress-related neural activity,
support giving was also associated with increased VS activity to
viewing images of close others. Those who reported giving
more support to others also displayed greater reward-related
activity to images of their own loved ones. There was no such
association between VS activity and reports of receiving
support (Inagaki.et.al.2016). To enhance the quality of this
article, there is need to include more empirical research that
will help to bolster the arguments and reduce more of
assumption bases to draw a conclusion for example the
historical bases as a source of findings.

References
Inagaki, T. K., Haltom, K. E. B., Suzuki, S., Jevtic, I.,
Hornstein, E., Bower, J. E., & Eisenberger, N. I. (2016). The
neurobiology of giving versus receiving support: the role of
stress-related and social reward-related neural
activity. Psychosomatic medicine, 78(4), 443.
Missing hanging indent. First word after the colon should be
capitalized in the article title and the full journal name should
be capitalized.

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